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Bootstrapping Citrix Netscaler (Sorta)

When deploying an instance within the Amazon Cloud, one can usually specify how to configure the instance during creation. However, not all instances support this so easily and Citrix Netscaler is one of those instances.

Anytime I’ve ever deployed a Netscaler instance with bootstrapping options, the instance always ends up not responding and of no use. As a workaround, it’s possible to deploy a standard Netscaler AMI instance and manually apply the configuration that the bootstrapping normally does.

The script that creates the Netscaler configuration file echoes each compiled line into the path provided to it, which should be /nsconfig/ns.conf as the default location for a Netscaler configuration file.

One really important part to secure the Netscaler is to include SSL certificates, which can be bundled as a tar archive, made available by URL, and extracted to the /nsconfig/ssl/ directory where SSL certificates are stored and used by Netscaler. Be sure to include not only the issued certificate, but any root and intermediate certificates as well.

If bootstrapping were to work correctly, it should be possible to create a script at /nsconfig/nsafter.sh to download the first script, running it while passing it the needed parameters, and the Netscaler’s configuration being easily setup with little work. Make sure to reboot after to refresh the newly created configuration!

This is by no means a “copy and run” or full solution, but the scripts can be modified in order to accommodate for any valid Netscaler configuration with a little work.